Stories

Ex-Military recluse Hank runs his isolated farm with measured violence and tactical clarity. When Jesse, a 22-year-old, stumbles into Hank’s world, the "math" of the farm changes forever. Jesse is more than a stray; and his dark past is about to catch up with him.

Hank doesn't offer pity; he offers an absolute, grounding ownership. But while trying to protect the boy, he realizes he can’t hold the line alone and calls in favors.

The debt is about to be paid in lead and spent fury.

Lost in the snow, a runaway with no memory stumbles into the path of a fierce protector. A fated encounter, a forbidden bond—can love break the chains of destiny?

Owen has been hiding his whole life. Closeted in a Catholic funeral home family, fake-dating his best friend Margot for three years, headed to a college he doesn't want. Then Ryder messages him on a dating app and everything shifts. Ryder is rough, honest, reckless, and completely unwilling to be someone's secret. As their connection deepens over one Ohio summer, Owen finds himself caught between the safe lie he's been living and the terrifying truth Ryder keeps pushing him toward. Something has to break. And Ryder's determined to take him on the ride of his life before it does.

The French Revolutionary War is finally coming to a conclusion, and after eight years of conflict, George Granger is going to have to adapt to a world at peace. While the conflict with France may be at an end, George has his own challenges to face. He has returned home to find himself richer, but estranged from his wife. His best friend and lover, Francis Calvert, has been wounded in the Caribbean and has not yet returned to England. Join George as he navigates this fraught era, which may be even more dangerous than when England at France were at war.

Ark II is now on the new world and life begins for them.

In 2001, at a Catholic boarding school defined by strict rules and quiet expectations, Tommy Harrington expects nothing more than to blend into the background. Everything changes when he meets Brian McFadden, a charismatic, fearless boy who pulls him into a friendship unlike anything he has ever known. As the years pass, their bond deepens through shared secrets, quiet moments, and unspoken feelings. In a world where some truths are too dangerous to name, Tommy and Brian must navigate the fragile space between friendship, love, and everything left unsaid.

Remy, slave of the strict professor Therese and her wife Ellen, a colorful artist, takes devotionally care of the household and the students Therese lets live in her villa.

But the peacefulness is severely disturbed when Therese's niece Claire moves in, who soon fills the villa with parties and dubious activities. But what puts Remy personally in much greater turmoil is Claire's slave, Anduin. For the appearance of Remy's older brother seems to push open a portal to his past which he would have preferred to keep firmly closed...

The year is 1891, and the Wild West is dying. Alvarez is a smartly dressed, smooth-talking bandito riding north with a stolen fortune, a lethal six-shooter, and one very spoiled cat. He travels alone, until he finds a half-frozen boy bleeding in the cold mud. Devon is an exile, violently banished from his Mennonite community and hunted by the very boys who broke him. As they ride together, Devon's cold logic clashes with Alvarez's flashy chaos. Slowly, the pinstriped killer and the battered runaway must learn to trust each other before the past catches up to them both.

In which a formerly dead alchemist does no work to solve his own mysterious resurrection, instead too busy falling in love with the eldritch entity stalking him.

Cwtch is a Welsh word, translated into English it means a hug, but the meaning is deeper and more profound than a simple hug. When you give someone a cwtch you also give them a safe place and this is what twenty something Londoner Harry gives Welsh farmboy Aled. The story tells how two souls find each other, and recognise one another immediately. It is attraction, but also love at first sight, although true love is never easy.

This story is also published under the title Eighteen Years by E K Stokes.